1. He was held hostage at the age of five by King Stephen, and was threatened with death by catapult. The Marshal’s father (being such a badass and everything) coolly shot back that he “still had the anvils and hammers to produce even finer” sons.
2. His protégé (of sorts) was Henry the Young King, a figure forgotten in history almost as much as the Marshal himself. (Henry doesn’t even make it onto my ruler which lists the Kings & Queens of England, but neither does Lady Jane Grey for that matter).
3. He was illiterate. Hollywood please take note, for in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood he would not have been able to read the note sent to him by his spy. (Also it wouldn’t have been written in English either, because in twelfth-century England stuff was written in French or Latin, Anglo-Norman at a push. But now I guess I’m just being picky).
4. At the age of fifty he was besieging castles and running up ladders. Though once he had got to the top, he knocked out an enemy solider and promptly sat on him whilst getting his breath back.
5. He witnessed the Magna Carta. In fact he signed the Magna Carta along with the several other Earls. Considering how important school history tells you the Magna Carta was it’s funny that nobody has heard of the Marshal. (Consequently I now consider it my life’s work to make up for this deficit).
6. He was buried in Temple Church, London. The Marshal became a member of the Templar order just before his death, after having travelled to the Holy Land earlier in his life. His effigy (sans nose and leg – damn those German bombs) can still be seen today in Temple Church, along with the effigies of at least two of his sons.
7. He had five sons but none of them produced an heir before their deaths, and so his earldom passed out of the male line. Matthew Paris describes in his thirteenth-century chronicle the foolish manner in which Gilbert Marshal died. “He was…destined to clerical orders, and was reported to be weak and unskilful in warlike exercises…Whilst the earl, then, was amusing himself by checking his horse at full speed, and anon goring his sides with his sharp spurs…suddenly…both the reins suddenly broke off...the horse became unmanageable, and…struck his rider a violent blow…he…began to totter in his saddle, and soon after fell, half-dead, from his horse—with one foot, however, fixed in the stirrup; and in this manner he was dragged some distance over the field, by which he suffered some internal injuries, which caused his death.” Ouch.
8. He has a 19,214 line poem written about him, which is pretty impressive stuff considering he started out life as the fourth son of a minor royal servant.
9. He was described by the late Annalist historian Georges Duby as having a strong sword arm but a “small brain”. (I know he’s dead and that he was one of the best medievalists but still…I don’t like that guy)!
10. He was according to the Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton the “greatest knight that ever lived”. Enough said.
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